Performance
In these performances, I “became” light. Light propagating from my body magnified my movements. I felt the light as my body—its direction, scale and geometry—and moved accordingly. It became clear that the performances worked for me and for viewers when the light, body and architecture cohered in movement, dissolving the habitually perceived boundaries between these elements.
This was the goal and message of the work: the experience of light as vision, revealing the perceptual basis of the world in concept, by which the nature of “light” itself is revealed. I had established fresh perceptual ground in collective experience through an inversion of light’s illuminating function.
Eye Dance
A collaboration with poet and visual artist Elizabeth Goldring, using Light Dance to communicate with her impaired eye. Goldring viewed the performances through a scanning laser ophthalmoscope that directed imagery onto healthy portions of her damaged retina. This work led to “Eye Robot,” a “seeing-machine” for low-vision people.
My New Friend SU: The Moon’s Other Side
Elizabeth Goldring’s “Eye Robot” played a leading role in a theatrical collaboration with stage director and playwright Robert Wilson.
Light Dances in the night sky
A series of projects with the artist Otto Piene; wearing mirrored and holographic costumes, Riskin performed Light Dances in the sky, lifted upon helium-filled, polyethelene tubes.
Riskin performed in light beams cast through the glass of Piene’s “Prism Dome” at the Schadow Arkaden in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Robotic Light Ballet
A collaboration with Otto Piene to build motion platforms for his “Light Ballet.” In 2014 the Light Ballet Robots featured in the Otto Piene memorial at MIT.
Regenbogen Raster
In appreciation of Otto Piene’s “Light Ballet,” Developed for an exhibition at ZERO Haus, Düsseldorf, Germany in 2021, the project built upon Otto Piene’s “Light Ballet” with novel techniques and LED light sources.
MIT 150th Sky Art Event
With Otto Piene, Riskin led the planning and execution of the culminating event of MIT’s sesquicentennial celebration, lifting Piene’s inflatable stars, Cereus and Paris, into the night sky of MIT’s Killian Court.
Silo Solos
Experiments in the “Light Silo” and “Bell Silo” at the Otto and Elizabeth Piene Art Farm in Groton, Massachusetts.
Ikaria hologram performance
For the 2002 Sky Art Conference in Ikaria, Greece, Riskin created a holographic window through which his Light Dance performance was virtual rings of light flanking his body.